The Emperor as Bodhisattva

Any study of Wutai
Shan during the Qing period needs to begin with David Farquhar’s seminal 1978 article “Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch’ing Empire.”14 This was and still remains a monumental piece of scholarship. In fact, it was
a piece of scholarship that was a full twenty years ahead of its time. It laid the
foundation not only for the New Qing History, but also more prosaically for the study of Wutai Shan and Qing culture. Indeed, as
confirmed by the recent work of Köhle,15 and the article of Tuttle in this volume,16
Farquhar’s general thesis still
stands: the Manchus
expended an enormous amount of time and resources on the cult of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom
(Mañjuśrī,
Jampelyang’jam dpal dbyangs) and Wutai Shan pilgrimage. Moreover, as
Charleux’s article readily confirms,17 this project carried out by
the metropole had a great impact upon the Mongols. As missionaries and travelers in nineteenth-century
Inner Asia all record, the Mongols went to Wutai Shan in droves. These Westerners even compared the mountain to
Mecca and Jerusalem. Thus clearly something was going on, and Farquhar was the first to take this
phenomenon seriously.

Yet Farquhar’s essay, no matter
how brilliant, was not without flaws. For example, as several scholars have recently
pointed out the Manchu
patronage of both Tantric Buddhism and Wutai Shan did not solely have a Yuan precedent. Rather, as
is now becoming more and more evident the Ming court was also heavily involved with
Tibetan lamas, their
particular form of Buddhism, and Wutai Shan, up through the sixteenth century.18 Thus as Elliott reminds us in his work on the
[page 248]
memory
of Zhu Yuanzhang in Qing historiography, the Qing was not only “Inner Asian,”
but also drew heavily upon the “Chinese,” or more aptly “the Ming tradition” as
well.19 In fact, as Tuttle convincingly shows in his study of the imperial gazetteers
of Wutai Shan, the
main audience for much of this early court sponsored material was not the so-called
Inner Asians, but the Chinese, including those who had converted to Tibetan Buddhism.

The reasons for this are certainly numerous. Yet to understand the Manchu decision to expend
enormous amounts of time and money on this particular pilgrimage site it is important
to recognize that Wutai
Shan had long been a component of the Mongols’ Buddhist tradition. Indeed, the Mongols were well aware of
Mañjuśrī and
Wutai Shan long
before the appearance of the Manchus. In fact one of the earliest texts brought from the Ming court and
translated into Mongolian
was the Mañjuśrī-​nāma-​saṃgīti,20 a central text of the Mañjuśrī cult.21 It was even prepared in a quadralingual edition in 1592 at the request of
Altan Khan’s grandson.22 Yet it was not only such canonical texts that were in circulation among the
Mongols in the sixteenth
century. There were also divination texts, such as The
Mirror of Mañjuśrī’s Benevolence, the Refuge: The Method of Reckoning
Calamities, which places Mañjuśrī specifically on Wutai Shan.23 Moreover, the early Mongolian manuscripts from Olon Süme in Inner
Mongolia also include fragments of an incense offering that mentions
Wutai Shan.24 Similarly, among the Kharbukin Balghas birch bark manuscripts, which were discovered in a stupa in
Outer Mongolia, there is a prayer
for rebirth that says specifically “On China’s
[page 249]
Wutai Shan mountain where the victorious
youth Holy Mañjuśrī dwells.”25 Of course, one can rightfully wonder how such texts actually impacted Mongol conceptualizations,
much less their religious practices – something we may never know – though the fact
that Altan Khan (1507-1582) named one of his daughters “Mañjuśrī” seems to
reflect a familiarity, albeit an odd one, with the tradition.26 Moreover, the importance of Mañjuśrī for the Mongols is also borne out by the fact that the Fifth Dalai Lama
initially recognized Zanabazar
as an incarnation of Mañjuśrī, and only later did he “revoke” this title, no doubt in
regard to his relations with the Manchus, and then re-recognize him as an incarnation of Tāranātha, or Jebdzundamba.27 Yet the most telling piece of evidence for Mongol interest in the cult of Mañjuśrī is that,
contrary to the Tibetan
tradition, they made the Mañjuśrī-​nāma-​saṃgīti the opening text of the Mongolian
KangyurBka’ gyur (Tripiṭaka).28 The cult of Mañjuśrī and his connection to Wutai Shan was thus well-known to the Mongols, and it was clearly
from them, as with so much else (script, military structures, and so forth) that the
Manchus acquired this
tradition beginning already during the reign of Hong Taiji.29

In his article Farquhar
unfortunately overlooked this fact. He also misunderstood the actual development of
the Wutai Shan cult
among the Mongols. Indeed,
he believed that the Manchus’ appropriation of this practice was both an immediate and important
success in the ideological project of incorporating the Mongols within the Qing orbit. Yet the reality is completely the
opposite. Indeed, the Manchu promotion of Wutai Shan in the early part of the dynasty seems in fact to have been
directed largely towards the Chinese, and not the Mongols. This is not, however, to suggest that
the Manchus were not also
trying to promote Wutai
Shan among the Mongols, nor that Mongols were not involved in this project.30 Yet the
[page 250]
fact of the matter is that all of these
activities carried out by the court did not seem to have much impact on Mongol religiosity. Indeed,
the Mongols only started to
go on pilgrimage to the mountain in the late eighteenth century. And it only became a
mass phenomenon in the nineteenth century.

Not only is this “lag-time” borne out by the extant Mongolian stelae at Wutai Shan,31 but also in Mongol
literature. The earliest “indigenous” Mongol description of Wutai Shan, for example, appeared only in 1813.32 Similarly, no early Mongol history ever mentions Wutai Shan; however, in nineteenth-century sources mentions
of the mountain are commonplace.33 Indeed, the most dramatic example of this development, highlighting the Qing-period conflation of the
Mongols, Buddhism and
Wutai Shan, is
found only in Dharmatala’s late-nineteenth-century Rosary of White Lotuses (Pema Karpö TrengwaPadma dkar po’i phreng ba), which
claims erroneously that the Third Dalai
Lama memorialized the death of Altan Khan by giving the Heruka initiation, and offering the
Heruka
maṇḍala at Wutai Shan.34

The same development is also seen in ritual texts, wherein the mountain becomes more
and more prevalent over time. In the case of texts devoted to the White Old Man
(chaghan ebügen), for example, the earliest texts claim he came from a
place called Jimistü, meaning
“having fruits.”35 In later texts, however, the White Old Man actually resides on Wutai Shan. In one text he
even proclaims, “I am the
[page 251]
Buddha called the White Old Man who
comes from Wutai
Shan, the place of the five Mañjuśrīs.”36 Similarly, prophetic texts circulating among the Mongols also came to be attributed to Mañjuśrī. These texts in
fact are described as appearing among humanity by falling from the sky onto the
temples of Wutai
Shan.37 Yet the best example of this widespread recognition and acceptance of
Mañjuśrī and
the Wutai Shan cult
among the nineteenth century Mongols is well captured in their inclusion in both wedding ceremony
texts, and the ritual texts surrounding horse races. In the latter case, Wutai Shan is thus included
among the sacred mountains that are offered aspersions of fermented mare or camel’s milk (kumis).38 And in the case of Mongol weddings, one of the
presents that have to be presented during the elaborate gift-giving rituals of a
marital union is “Mañjuśrī’s five presents.”39

The cult of Wutai
Shan thus clearly became central within the religious world of the
Mongols; however, it was
not necessarily the direct result of Manchu machinations in the metropole. And this is one of the two
major flaws in Farquhar’s article.
Namely, premised as it is on a unidirectional framework of power, it overlooks
precisely the process whereby Mongols actually accepted, rejected, re-interpreted, deflected, or
re-negotiated what was being assiduously broadcast by the Qing court. Indeed, as
Schaeffer’s work on Tibetan poetry reveals,40 the growth of
Wutai Shan
worship was less the result of imperial tours, multi-volume gazetteers and statue
production, but more the result of the written, and no doubt more often the spoken
word of revered Tibetan
Buddhist hierarchs resident on the mountain.41 Indeed, the fact that the Wutai Shan cult took off among the Mongols
[page 252]
and Tibetans at exactly the same
time as poetry about the mountain appeared is clearly not a coincidence. And when we
recognize this fact we need to re-evaluate many things, including the power of the
Qing state vis-à-vis the Dharma, the nature of Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist networks, and the role of
orality in Qing culture.
Unfortunately, however, these issues are beyond the scope of this paper, thus here I
would like to turn to the question at hand: What does pilgrimage to Wutai Shan reveal about
Qing culture? In
particular, what does it tell us about the fluid and porous boundaries between the
communities who went to the mountain?

These questions obviously tie into the issues raised above. They also relate to the
second major flaw in Farquhar’s
paper; namely, his presentation of the Mongols as an essentialized whole. Indeed, he offers no evidence
or critical awareness of the Mongols as either changing over time, or that the Mongols were not a homogenous entity. Farquhar himself clearly knew better. His
own dissertation revealed the deep institutional differences among the Mongols within the Qing.42 Yet, it is just such an essentialized use of the term that in this case
obscures what impact the cult of Wutai Shan had upon the Mongols, since they are never imagined as
anything but a holistic receptacle of Manchu propaganda.

[21]
On the history and importance of this text, see Ronald M. Davidson, “The Litany of Names of Mañjuśrī: Text and Translation of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A.
Stein, ed. Michel
Strickmann, Mélanges Chinois et
Bouddhiques 20 (Brussels: Institute Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1981),
1-69.

[22]
The Mañjuśrī-​nāma-​saṃgīti was initially translated in the Yuan period,
presumably by a circle of translators around Chökyi ÖzerChos kyi 'od zer between 1295-1312,
and it was a later copy of this text that was reissued in 1592 in a
quadralingual version. Although this 1592 edition is only slightly different
than the fourteenth century version, a nearly word-for-word copy of this
earlier work, now translated by Lodrö NampaBlo gros nam pa (see Alice Sárközi, “A 17th Century Mongol Mañjusrinamasamgiti with
Commentary,” Acta
Orientalia Hungaricae 26, no. 3 [1982]: 449-68).

[23]
György Kara, The Mongol and Manchu Manuscripts and
Blockprints in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004),
229.

[29]
The connection between the Manchus and Mañjuśrī, for example, is found in
Mongolian
documents from the early seventeenth century, see Cimeddorji, “Baraγun tümed-ün teüken-tü qolbuγdaqu kedün surbaljis,” in The Third International Symposium on
Mongology Sponsored by Inner Mongolia: Summaries of Symposium Papers
(Hohhot: University of Inner Mongolia,
1998), 324-26.

[30]
In addition to the early Manchu projects described by Farquhar, Köhle and Tuttle, which involved the Mongols, we should also
note that based on a manuscript now housed in Beijing we know that there was a Mongolian translation of
the ten-scroll (juan) gazetteer in preparation already in 1680
(cing liyang san aγulan-u sin’e
bicig, in Dumdadu
ulus-un erten-ü monggol nom bicig-ün yerüngkei garcag [Catalogue of Ancient Mongolian Books
and Documents of China, Beijing: Beijing
Tushuguan Chubanshe, 2000] 4824). Moreover, as seen in the
biography of the important Inner Mongolian lamabla
maChagan Diyanchi, who
went repeatedly to Wutai
Shan at the request of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1723), it is also clear that other Mongols were also involved with the
mountain long before the subsequent explosion of the Wutai Shan cult in the nineteenth
century (caγan diyanci lam-a-yin
namtar, Ms. Vol 1, no. 56, in Dumdadu 4761]). In particular, Gombojab, the well-known Mongol author and teacher at the Tibetan school in Beijing, compiled the Jatakas of the Five Hundred Panditas
Receiving Blessings at Wutai Shan (utayisan aγula-yin adistid-tu
sitüged-ece tabun jaγan bandida-yin cedig orosiba; Dumdadu 4833), which was based on the
work of Lobzang Tashi and then translated into Mongolian by his student
Sasana Dhara (TendzinBstan ‘dzin). In addition, a Mongolian edition of the
Qianlong emperor’s
(1711-1799) imperially
sponsored twenty-two-scroll gazetteer
of 1785 was in preparation, yet never published (on this work and a
reproduction of one of its pages, see György Kara, Books
of the Mongolian Nomads: More than Eight Centuries of Writing
Mongolian [Bloomington: Research
Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2005], 219-20). All of these
works confirm, as Farquhar
pointed out long ago, that the Manchu court and its affiliated scholars were heavily
invested in the cult of Wutai Shan. Yet these works and their circulation, while no
doubt important, were only part of the dynamic.

[31]
Of the one hundred MongolianQing period stelae at
Wutai Shan
only three are from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rest are from
the nineteenth century (Dumdadu 12786-996 and 12610-47).

[34]
Damchø Gyatsho Dharmatala,
Rosary of White Lotuses, Being the Clear Account of How the
Precious Teaching of Buddha Appeared and Spread in the Great Hor
Country, tr. Piotr Klafkowski (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987), 226.

[37]
For example, the text Order of the Holy Panchen Erdeni, of His Brightness the Dalai
Lama and of the Holy Chinggis Khan (boγda bancin erdeni dalai
lam-a-yin gegen boγda cinggis qaγan-narun jarliγ-un bicig) begins:
“The prophetic book of Holy Manjusri fell down onto the golden and bronze
temple of Wutai
Shan” (Alice
Sárközi, Political
Prophecies in Mongolia in the 17-20th Centuries [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992], 73). Another one, titled
simply the Words of Holy Mañjuśrī
(boγda
manjusiri-yin jarliγ), begins “On Wutai Shan, in the Golden Temple of
Tārā
mother, a book fell down from the sky from above. Khans and common people!
Listen to these words attentively!” (Sárközi, Political Prophecies,
81).

[38] “To the Vajra-throne of India; to Potala Mountain; to Wutai Shan; to each
individually I offer a full nine aspersions” (Henry Serruys, Kumiss Ceremonies and Horse Races
[Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974], 50). A
similar passage is also found in the text from Üüshin banner; however, in it Wutai Shan is called the
“five-peaked eastern mountain”
(doron-a tabun üjügürtü
aγulan; Serruys, Kumiss Ceremonies, 84).

[41]
In this regard we should also note that some of this Tibetan poetry,
especially that of Rölpé DorjéRol pas rdo rje, was also translated into Mongolian (Orod-un manglai serigün aγula-yin oron-u
nomlal süsüg-ün lingqu-a-yi delgeregülügci γayiqamsiγ-tu naran-u tuy-a
kemekü orosiba, translated by Gelek DamchöDge legs dam chos and printed
in Beijing in 1831 [Dumdadu 4837]; see also
Vladimir Uspensky, Catalogue of
the Mongolian Manuscripts and Xylographs in the St. Petersburg State
University Library [Tokyo: Institute for
the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999],
282, #256).